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Andy Dufresne
Andy Dufresne is the main protagonist in Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption. History Prior to Incarceration Prior to his incarceration in 1947, Andy Dufresne was the Vice President of a successful Portland bank. He had marital problems, and his wife was sleeping with a golf pro named Glenn Quentin. She wanted a divorce, but he would not grant one. Later, Andy was sitting in his car at their turnout, with a revolver and a bottle of bourbon. According to him, he wanted to scare his wife, but later decided she wasn't worth it and that he would grant a divorce. The next day, his wife and her lover were found dead with four bullets in each of them. Andy was arrested and charged with their murder, and was later convicted and sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary for life. 1940s 1950s Andy became an important asset to the warden and the prison staff because of his accounting. He was exempt from manual labor and harassment by his fellow inmates. He wrote letters to the state for six years asking for books and funds to help build a prison library. After he succeeds, he is thrown in the hole for playing a song over the speaker so the entire prison can hear. Andy continues to send letters until the state sends him an annual fund of 500 dollars just to shut him up. 1960s Throughout the early 1960s Andy built the Brooks Hatlen Memorial Library. By 1963 he had built the finest prison library in all of New England. The same year, the warden started his new public service program where the prisoners would work outside the walls. In reality it was simply a way for the Warden to make money from the cheap labor of the inmates. Andy, using an entity named Randall Stephens, laundered the Warden's money. In 1965 Tommy Williams arrived at Shawshank and Andy and his friends took a liking to him soon after he arrived. Soon he was a part of their gang. Tommy wanted to try for his GED so Andy helped him. When he took his test he thought he had failed and had a breakdown. Andy sent in the test anyway, and Tommy passed with a C+ average. Tommy told Red and Andy he knew who really killed Andy's wife and her lover, Elmo Blatch. Andy went to the warden and told him about the new evidence. The Warden didn't want to let Andy get a new trial and leave Shawshank, so after Andy called him an Obtuse, he sent him to the hole. During Andy's stay in the hole Tommy was murdered by the Warden and Captain Hadley. Once he was released from the hole, Andy realized that the warden was never going to let him leave Shawshank State Penitentary. Escape In 1966, Andy escaped from Shawshank Prison. He had spent 19 years tunneling through the wall of his cell with his rock hammer, covering up the hole with his girlie posters. After Tommy was murdered, Andy had been there long enough. On a stormy night, he took the warden's crooked books and replaced them with the bible that he had used to hide his rock hammer. He also put on one of the warden's suits, covering it up with his prison uniform. He procured a 6-foot length of rope from the loading dock, and tied a plastic bag filled with the books and his rocks to his foot. He crawled through the tunnel he had dug to a sewer area, where he busted a pipe open in unison with the thunder. After three attempts, the pipe burst open. He crawled through 500 yards of the sewer pipe, coming out into a river. He ripped off his shirt and basked in his freedom. The next day, Andy walked into the Casco Bank of Portland and nearly a dozen other banks, and, posing as Randall Stephens, he withdrew more than 370,000 dollars of the warden's money. He also mailed the books to the Daily Bugle, which published a story that caused Captain Hadley to be arrested and Warden Norton to commit suicide. He later crossed into Mexico at Fort Hancock, before settling down in Zihuatanejo, where he bought a worthless boat and began to fix it up. He sent Red a postcard from Fort Hancock. After being paroled, Red violates his probation and travels to Zihuatanejo to be with Andy. The movie ends with them embracing on the beach next to the ocean. Category:Prisoners